Teaching Empathy through Art

While researching for our upcoming publications on Art-Based Learnings, I came across this article about how students at the Weill Cornell Medical College get exposure to Arts to help them develop empathy and sensitivity:

“Weill Cornell also has a longstanding Humanities and Medicine program that is designed to help students better understand patient experiences through literature, art, and music. We bring artists and writers to campus to speak to students, and we have electives that allow students to approach medicine through the study of art at a museum and by reading literary pieces. We recently introduced a third-year seminar on “Mindful Practice and the Art of Medicine” to encourage self-reflection. In addition, a group of medical students launched a journal last fall, called Ascensus, which explores the humanistic side of medicine through poems, art, prose pieces, and even a musical number contributed by members of our community.”

This resonates well with Steve Jobs’ comment that he had made while introducing the iPad 2 in March 2013. Jobs summarized his strategy as “It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.”